


no matter which way you go

by escherzo



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Arena Ghosts, Columbus Blue Jackets, Friends to Lovers, Human/Ghost relationship, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 03:10:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13226886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escherzo/pseuds/escherzo
Summary: “So,” it says excitedly, once the room is empty, and he shivers as something cold settles at his side on the bench, “where in Finland are you from?”Markus can't see the voice, of course; he never can. He smiles in its direction anyway.





	no matter which way you go

**Author's Note:**

> happy new year, friends! have markus "not quiet just busy listening to the arena ghosts" noot falling in love with a finnish ghost as my gift to kick off 2018 
> 
> (said finnish ghost's name is the name of my great-grandmother's father, as it happens, and he is from the city my dad's family is from. what's the point of doing genealogy work if you can't use it for things like this?
> 
> Also, the backstory for Nationwide Arena being haunted as shit if you are not familiar: http://www.forgottenoh.com/Counties/Franklin/nationwidearena.html)

Sometimes the voices are quiet. Sometimes they're a cacophony of harsh noises and screams and the smell of smoke is so overpowering it makes Markus choke and cough. 

He's been able to hear them from the first time he set foot inside the arena. He couldn't understand them at first, though. His English wasn't good enough for that. 

*

Near the Arctic Circle, the veil is thin. Oulu has two hundred thousand residents and fifty thousand more that half the city can see and half can't. Markus grew up listening to everything his great-grandparents said about how to improve his skating as he looped circles around the pond down the road because they were older and wiser and had seen many a hockey player come and go—many make it, and many fail on the way. 

They'd been dead for twenty years, but that didn't matter much.

*

He didn't think he'd make it. Playing in B-leagues in northern Finland didn't get you noticed, really, and he sent a silent prayer of thanks to his mummo and vaari when he was drafted a year after his first eligibility in the seventh round. A long-shot pick. The sort of pick you make when you're not sure it's going to work out. 

But drafted was drafted, and he was going to make sure it worked out. And it did. 

*

He's in his second year now. He and Ryan aren't quite the second pair, but they're not quite the third pair either. Everyone in the locker room smiles at him and laughs as he figures out how to tell jokes in English; they're so affectionate, so fond. He's not sure what he did to be so loved, but he feels it every time he walks into the locker room. 

The voices are clearer now. 

He can understand them in a way he couldn't before, and mostly what they are is—lonely. They've been trapped, clinging to the grounds for ninety years, and they don't know how much the world has changed since. Almost no one can hear them. 

Markus can. 

It's like being given a spot on special teams. When a responsibility is handed to you, you do your best with it because it's your duty to. That's what he's always been taught. 

“Hey, one of you want to try?”

Everyone else has gone home. The arena is dark and empty, and he's sitting on the floor of the second level with a tablet on the floor, Candy Crush pulled up. There are a number of things he's tried to explain to them, but demonstrations seem easiest when it comes to technology. When the screen in front of him starts changing, a figure unseen trying an experimental swipe, he's not surprised. 

He's got a duffle bag, too, a dozen or so history books from the library inside, and he unzips it and lays them out in a circle around him. He's not sure how many takers there will be. Last week, he introduced the arena ghosts—though he generally just thinks of them as “the voices”--to Youtube, and his laptop kept wobbling back and forth as they fought over who would get to see the documentary he loaded. They're calmer when he keeps them entertained. It's good for everyone. 

Other things they ask for—mostly wanting to know what became of their families—will have to wait until he has a better handle on how to look that up. Genealogy websites don't list the living. 

None of the guys know about this. He's not sure how to tell them, how to explain what he's doing in a way that doesn't make him sound crazy. Everyone likes him; if he told them he heard voices they might change their minds, and it's a risk he's not willing to take. So getting a spare key on the pretense of “extra practice” and sneaking in in the dead of night is his best bet thus far. Once or twice he's run into the night janitors, and they look at him and nod in a way that makes him think they might have done the same as him, once—they don't talk to him, because when he started out they realized his English was terrible, and they don't know how much it's improved—or at the very least, they know. They can hear too. 

It's comforting to know he's not alone.

*

“Nutivaara?” a voice says, off to his left, and Markus's head snaps up. The voice's accent is familiar and comforting in its familiarity--not one he's heard before. 

Everyone else is in the locker room too right now. The voice read it off his nameplate, and he can't respond until the others finish getting their gear off and leave, but he smiles and looks in the direction he thinks the voice came from and hopes it's enough for now. 

“The other one won't talk to me,” the voice says in Finnish. “Your goalie. Always wearing those—earmuffs that play music. And the Soviet can see me but I don't want to talk to him.” 

The Soviet? Markus blinks. 

“Wait until the others leave,” he mouths, hoping it gets across. 

He's not sure if it does or not, but the voice is silent as he removes his gear with a deliberate slowness, waiting for the others to clear out. If anyone thinks something of how he's always the last to leave, they've never said so; there is something to be said for cultivating a reputation for eccentricity. 

“So,” it says excitedly, once the room is empty, and he shivers as something cold settles at his side on the bench, “where in Finland are you from?”

Markus can't see the voice, of course; he never can. He smiles in its direction anyway. 

“Oulu. You?”

“Viipuri! It's so nice to talk to someone who speaks Finnish. The others get so tiresome. I'm Matti, by the way. Matti Haukkasalo.” 

“Markus,” Markus says, biting his lip. It's going to come up. He doesn't know how to bring it up, but Matti deserves to know. 

The thing is, Viipuri doesn't exist anymore.

The thing is, Viipuri doesn't exist because it's now Vyborg, Russia, and Matti already doesn't want to talk to the “Soviet” teammate and knowing what happened to his city might—Markus doesn't know how he would react to being told about the Winter War and the evacuation of Karelia, and isn't sure he wants to find out. 

“How did you end up in America?” he asks instead. It seems safer. 

Matti is quiet for a long moment.

“The civil war,” he says, finally. “I didn't want to fight. I was studying to become a preacher and didn't believe in violence, and there was no way to opt out except to flee. So I came to America to join my brother. Emil was writing for a newspaper in Upper Michigan then.” 

And then he came south and got into some sort of trouble that landed him in jail, Markus knows, though Matti doesn't fill in that blank for him. Then he burned with the others trapped in their cells. 

“A preacher, huh?” he says, trying to smile and not think about all that. 

“I was twenty and thought I was very holy,” Matti says, and Markus still can't see him but he can hear the smile in his voice. “Being dead for—how many years is it now?--certainly has changed my religious views though.” 

“It's 2017,” Markus supplies. “Almost ninety years I think.” 

“What's Finland like now?” Matti asks, soft and wondering. “Do you know what Viipuri is like?”

“It's...” Markus hesitates for a long moment. “It's safe and peaceful now. Hasn't fought with Russia in almost seventy years. Our schools are the envy of the world. Everyone is taken care of.” 

There's a silence, and Markus knows Matti knows what he didn't answer.

“There is no Viipuri anymore,” he says finally. 

“What?”

The air next to Markus is colder, suddenly, and he shudders as he says, “It's called Vyborg now. Karelia was lost in the forties, a little after you died.” 

Matti doesn't get angry like Markus had feared. He just goes quiet.

“Oh,” he says, finally. It hurts to hear it. If he still could hurt, it sounds like it would have hurt for Matti to say. 

“I'm sorry,” Markus says, though he knows it's nowhere near enough.

“It's alright,” Matti says, even though they both know it isn't. “Tell me about Oulu? I've heard of it but I never got to go.”

So Markus tells him about the music festivals, and the bay, and his sister and her horses, and anything else he can think of until it seems like Matti might be smiling again. He gets a laugh outright when he has to explain the air guitar world championships and what air guitar is—because there's no easy way to explain it other than to demonstrate it. 

“Have you ever played hockey?” Markus asks. “I could find an extra pair of skates if you want to come skate with me.” 

“I was always very clumsy,” Matti admits. “I never did learn to skate. But I'll try if you teach me.” 

*

The skates disappear as Matti puts them on, but Markus can see the marks they leave on the ice. Matti only makes it a few steps before he trips over himself and lands on the ice, the scrape of skates abruptly stopping and the ice shavings clearing in a spot where he fell. 

“I wish I could hold you up,” Markus says, trying not to laugh. “Can you hold onto me?” 

“If I concentrate very hard, but then I can't concentrate very hard on trying to balance.” Matti is laughing now, and when Markus feels two spots of cold, one on each shoulder, he tries to skate forward, but he trips over nothing—or, he trips over someone unseen's skates going out behind him—and ends up on his ass, laughing with Matti.

“Maybe we should start with you holding onto the wall,” he manages, finally. 

“I think that would be wise,” Matti agrees, and his voice goes high-pitched as he giggles and Markus is hopelessly endeared. 

It's late, and Markus should have been at home and in bed a long time ago, but Matti keeps getting up after he's fallen, keeps trying, keeps making Markus smile, and he can't help but want to stay until he gets it right. 

They get him to be able to make two or three strides without wiping out, eventually. It's a work in progress.

*

The other voices are still around, and Markus still brings them things and shows them documentaries and brings them the daily newspaper, but Matti becomes a constant. He's terrible at skating. He likes going on at length about the philosophical implications of life after death, which is only natural for someone who has been dead since the 1930s but still continues to exist, Markus supposes. He only knows songs that Markus has heard from his grandparents, but is enthralled by Finnish metal. 

“I wish you could see me,” Matti says. “I'm learning how to do that air guitar.” 

Markus wishes he could too.

*

“Okay, so to be able to do this first you have to be able to balance on one foot,” Markus says, spinning around with his left leg up to face Matti. 

“Oh _no_ ,” Matti says. 

“You can do it! I couldn't at first either and then I learned.”

“How old were you when you learned?”

Well. There is that. “Uh. Six?”

It's amazing, really, that Markus has figured out how to know Matti is rolling his eyes without actually being able to see him. He's not quite sure what the change in the air that signifies that is, but he knows it now. 

Skating forward was an adventure unto itself, and they haven't quite mastered backwards yet, but by god he is going to figure out how to get Matti to do crossovers eventually. 

“It's not like you're short on time,” he points out.

“That's fair—wah!”

How Matti is still afraid of falling down when he doesn't have a corporeal body to injure is a mystery to Markus, but yet here they both are, watching him fall down and freak out about it. 

It's an instinct thing, Matti insists defensively when Markus asks. 

*

“You know,” Nick says, one day, in the locker room, “you're doing great this year. You don't have to impress anyone.”

“Thanks?” Markus says, eyebrows up.

“Staying late I mean,” Nick clarifies. 

“I like the quiet.”

Nick blinks, shrugs, smiles at him, and that seems to be the end of that. It's not true, of course; it's not quiet. There are three hundred voices clamoring for attention, and one in particular that he thinks of as a friend, now, and all of them want to be heard and acknowledged. Making good on that is the least he can do. 

The Planet Earth documentary he cued up the other day had enthralled at least a dozen of them, if not more, and a few of the others have taken to debating current politics with a fervor Markus can't quite figure out given that none of it affects them anymore. But at least it's something to do. 

Hobbies are limited when you've been dead for ninety years.

*

Matti, on the other hand, takes an unexpected shine to bad American reality TV, even though he doesn't understand anything that's being said and Markus has to attempt to translate even though some of the shows have accents he's terrible at. They pause the shows on his tablet a lot so he can fumble through it, and Matti laughs helplessly when he has to break off and go, “and then they said something very fast in a stupid accent and I have no idea, okay,” and sometimes then they make up dialogue instead. The model show he's inexplicably enthralled by suddenly has drama where two of the contestants have the same long-distance boyfriend and another has a phobia of potted plants.

“Why did she do so badly,” Matti says, and Markus giggles and points out a fern in the background. 

“Terrifying,” Matti says. “I should have known.” 

More than anything, Markus wants in that moment to be able to lean into him and laugh against his shoulder, but he doesn't even know where his shoulder is. 

*

“Do you think you can leave the arena?” Markus asks, one day. He can _feel_ the bafflement, and so he continues, “not to go far, or anything, just—around the block maybe. To the park across the street, or the river.” There's been a cold snap for the past week or two and the river is frozen over, and if he can get there Markus wants to skate on that ice with Matti. 

“I don't know,” Matti admits. “I could try. If I suddenly stop talking you'll know that's as far as I can go.” 

“You could--” Markus flushes. “If you hold my hand I'll be able to feel it if you leave.”

Matti's hand in his isn't warm, but Markus can't stop thinking about it anyway. Can't stop being glad he can feel it, even if he can't see it. 

“I haven't been out here before,” Matti says, as Markus leads him out the practice rink door. “The cars look so different than the ones I knew.” Everything else looks different too, Markus knows—the style of the buildings, the displays in the shop across the way, the parking garage. He stops for a moment to let Matti stare. “It's like a whole different world,” he continues, voice hushed. 

“Ninety years,” Markus reminds him, and they walk on. 

They make it to the river. Matti's hand in his isn't as cold as usual—like he's not entirely there anymore—but he can still talk. 

“Are you sure it's safe?” he asks Markus. 

“You can't drown,” Markus says, smiling, and Matti squeezes his hand. 

“It's not _me_ I'm worried about.” 

Oh. 

“It's been below zero for a week, it'll be alright,” Markus reassures him, and holds out his other hand. “Here, I'll spin you.” 

Matti falls once as they spin in lazy circles on the river, and he's always cold, but Markus can almost feel the warmth of his smile and it soothes the chill in his bones. The ice is bumpy and unpolished. He's never been happier. 

_I could love him_ , he thinks, and the thought aches; Matti has been dead for ninety years. He can't see him. The most he can feel him is in the cold of his touch. And yet--

“Thank you,” Matti says, and the cold is all around him suddenly, like he's been wrapped into a hug. “Thank you for showing me all this.” 

Markus swallows against the lump in his throat and says, “You're welcome.” 

*

He prays, sometimes, to at least be able to see him. Matti would laugh at him, say, “if there's an afterlife, don't you think I would have found it by now?” 

He still can't help but try. 

*

One day, they're walking through the park across the street from the arena, the first hints of spring warmth poking through the snow and ice, and Matti drops Markus's hand. 

“What's wrong?” Markus asks. 

“They--” He can't see Matti point, but he gets the idea. On the other side of the park, walking their dog, are two men, one with his arm wrapped around the small of the other's back. 

Markus swallows hard. Matti is from a different time. He's not sure how he's going to react to this, and is a little afraid to find out. 

“Is--” Matti's voice sounds so fragile. “Is that a thing you're allowed to be now?”

Oh. Oh, god. 

“Yeah,” Markus says, soft. “They might even be husbands. That's allowed now. In Finland too.” 

“Oh,” Matti says. “Can we stop for a moment? I need to sit down.” 

“Are you okay?” Markus asks, settling down on the park bench alongside the wave of cold that must be Matti. 

“It's just a lot to process,” Matti says. “When I was, you know--” _alive_ “--it... sometimes you might act on it but it had to be in secret and you couldn't talk about it. And even if you were like that you had to eventually marry a woman anyway. I never wanted to. But I didn't think I had the option. And then I ended up here.” 

And then you died, Markus doesn't say. 

“Sorry, I--” Matti laughs, and it sounds off. “I don't know why I'm sorry, I was going to apologize for being teary but you can't see that. But I'm just really glad the future is different than my time was.” 

“I'm going to need some help in knowing where you are,” Markus says, “but come here so I can hug you.” 

There's a wave of cold all down his front and he lowers his arms until they feel cold too, wrapping his arms around Matti as best as he can. 

*

It's been a rough game. Markus didn't have the worst night, personally, but it was an ugly loss, and he scowls down at his laces as he tugs them undone. He's not sure why he looks up, after. No one has said anything; he didn't hear a sound.

There's a man he doesn't recognize standing in the doorway. His hair is dark, parted sharply and slicked back like Dubi's sometimes is, and his eyes are big and blue and kind. He's handsome, in an odd sort of way, lips thin, nose wide and pointed, jaw sharply square. He's smiling at Markus. 

“Oh,” Markus says softly. He doesn't have to ask. He knows.

“You can see me now,” Matti says, and his smile is so gentle. “If you don't want to go home yet, can--” He ducks his head, smile widening. “Can I take you to dinner? I know I can't eat and can't pay, so I'm not much of a date, but.”

“Of course,” Markus says. “Of course you can.”

Everyone else is in their own worlds right now. If they notice that Markus is talking to someone they can't see, they don't say so. 

*

When Matti kisses Markus for the first time, his lips are cold, and when he pulls back, Markus smiles so wide his cheeks hurt. 

_I think I could love him_ , he thinks again.


End file.
